Sunday, November 08, 2009

News Junkies with limited time on their hands areguaranteed to get their fix of the day's Headlines withNEWSEUM - Wash. D.C.'s most Interactive Museum.This very useful website not only lets you click ona city's Front Page thumbnail, but also lets you zoom inand actually access the page in PDF format. If theheadline looks interesting enough to warrant reading ofthe entire article, the link to the newspaper in question isconveniently placed next to the PDF link. No need to typein a newspaper name into that Google Search box and wadethrough endless results for the exact URL. Just BookmarkNewseum.org and you're on your way to all the news that'sfit to print (or view online).

Whether it's in the USA or anywhere else in the world, likeItalyPoland

Tuesday, November 03, 2009

'Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam,Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home'~ John Payne

In a somewhat hidden and deserted strip of land alongside thebusy Port of Long Beach lies a former mudflat that was turnedinto an artificial island. Measuring less than 5 miles long,officially named Terminal Islandin 1918, this area wasonce the Tuna canning capital of the world.

Fine, I thought to myself last October as I was being driventhrough the shipyards of Long Beach to visit this place.But where was it ? No one in sight. No Maps, Directions,Concession stands, Museum Brochures or Restrooms. Nota soul in the area with the exception of a lone Mariner who wasprobably walking along this silent strip of land to get to hisvessel docked a few miles away.

And then it came into view, this rather large Monumental Statueof two Issei Fishermen, cast in Bronze. Looking deep into thedistance while their hands worked instinctively, perhaps dreamingof their old homes far away in Japan that they would in all realityprobably never see again. At once somber and mystifying andtouching. I had my fill of taking pics not realizing what all this wasabout until I got back to Texas and started reading up for this post.

A large amount of the work in those Canneries was performedby similar Japanese immigrants who took up residence there,building lives and families in their own traditional orthodoxand naive way.

Although the older children took part in normal activitiessuch as Baseball, dining with friends, attending Local Catholicschools, celebrating Christmas and New Years', enrolling in theBoy Scouts, etc., these 'Nisei' (second-generation Japanese-Americans of immigrant parents) still had a strong sense oftheir heritage thanks to their parents who were content itseems, to remain within the confines of their own tightly-knit,isolated community, speaking a weird dialect of English andJapanese words. For over two decades by all accounts it wasan idyllic existence for these families, right up until the 1941Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

Within twenty-four hours, these immigrants and their familieswere subjected to evacuation orders, literally banished foreverfrom Terminal Island. A population close to 3,000 was forciblyand unofficially removed by the FBI and sent to internment inCamps. Most of these Islanders wound up in Manzanar at thefoothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, victims of Wartimeand Racial hysteria.

After the war, they discovered that there was no 'going backhome' since their homes and schools had been razed to theground by the Navy. Not a trace remained to prove they hadonce lived a simple, happy life in the Cannery district.

Deeply dismayed but not willing to have a part of their livesobliterated, these former residents banded together and formedthe Terminal Islanders Club in 1971. A club that holdsperiodic Reunions, Picnics, Dances, Sports competitions, etc.,today these folks are well into their Eighties. As concerns grewabout their unique heritage disappearing, they succeededin erecting the Terminal Island Monument in 2002, a memorialto honor their parents and preserve their precious reveredmemories of Furosato: their Home Sweet Home.An almost-forgotten Memorial to an all-but forgotten time inJapanese-American History.Ansel Adams picture from the US Library of Congress